NEW HAVEN, Mo.–A new bait and switch scam on social media is using its victim’s friends to catch them off guard, according to New Haven Police Department.
Scammers craft a social media post with elements often shared by people altruistically.
“It either could be a dangerous person, or a missing kid or a missing adult with dementia or something,” said Christoper Neace, Chief of Police for New Haven. “Or something as simple as ‘Hey, here is a rent-to-own home for 500 bucks. No where is there going to be a rent-to-own home for $500 but people will share that.”
After the desired amount of shares occur, the scammer changes their post to a scam link.
“People will say ‘Hey, Jon shared this, I trust him. Let me click the link and see what it’s about’ and that’s when they get hacked whether it be for money or identity theft or simply just hacking their account and then pumping out more information.”
Neace says usually the elderly are victim to these scams but the scammers only need one person to fall for it before doing it again with a different post.
“Whenever they say ‘it only takes two seconds to share,’ or ‘flood the feed,’ or ‘bump the post’ then they’re trying to get it out there.”
Profiles crafting these scam posts typically have red flags, says Neace.
“If you click on the person’s name you can tell right away it’s a fake profile. There’s no friends, they’ve never shared anything before.”
He said another sign of a fake account is the name being the opposite gender from the profile picture.
If you believe what you see is a scam contact the admin of the social media page to have it removed potentially saving someone from becoming a victim. For posts related to missing people or dangerous people, he recommends talking with your local law enforcement to verify if the concern is legitimate. Police will usually put the concerns on their social media page to get the word out.
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